A Zemstvo Congress

Published:Iskra, No. 8, September 10, 1901.

      Published according to theIskratext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Foreign Languages Publishing House,1961,

      Moscow,Volume 5,

      pages101-102.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaandD. WaltersPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.

Thewave of excitement among the general public that spread over the
      country after the events of this spring is not receding. It makes itself
      felt in one form or another among all sections of Russian society, a
      society that as recently as January of this year seemed to be deaf and
      alien to the purposive work of Russian Social-Democracy. The government is
      bending its every effort to calm the troubled public conscience as quickly
      as possible with the usual soap bubbles such as the Manifesto of March 25
      on “heart felt protection”, such as the so-called Vannovsky
      Reforms or the Sipyagin and

      Shakhovskoi[1]solemn buffoon tours of Russia.... Some of the more naive among the
      general public will actually be calmed by such measures, but by far not
      all. Even the present-day Zemstvo people, about fifty per cent of whom are
      scared civil servants, seem to be coming out of the state of chronic
      trepidation to which they were reduced in the now historical stagnant
      epoch of the “Peacemaker-Tsar”.

HisMajesty the Bureaucracy, having now shed its crude covering of
      modesty, is arousing feelings of discontent and disgust even among the
      Zemstvos, among those timid people in whom civic courage and civic
      morality are almost completely atrophied.

Wehave been informed that in the city of X (for precaution, to remain
      unnamed) a congress of Zemstvo members was called at the end of June. It
      is said to have been attend ed by 40 or 50 Zemstvo people from several
      gubernias.

Thesepeople did not, of course, assemble to discuss political questions,
      but to solve peaceable, purely Zemstvo problems; they gathered
      “without infringing the bounds ofthe department and the extent of their authority”, as it is
      picturesquely expressed in the Zemstvo Instructions (Article 87). The
      meeting, however, was called without the per mission and knowledge of the
      administration and, consequently, was held “in contravention of the
      Instructions for the activities of Zemstvo institutions”, to quote
      the Instructions, and the assembled Zemstvo men gradually went over from
      the discussion of peaceable, innocent questions to a discussion of the
      general state of affairs. Such is the logic of life: conscientious Zemstvo
      men, howsoever they at times denounce radicalism and illegal work, are, by
      the force of events, faced with the necessity of illegal organisation and
      a more determined form of activity. Far be it from us to condemn this
      natural and perfectly correct path. It is time, at long last, for Zemstvo
      members to give an energetic and organised rebuff to a government that has
      taken the bit between its teeth, has killed rural self-government, has
      mutilated both urban and Zemstvo self-government, and with asinine
      obstinacy lays the axe to the last remnants of the Zemstvo institutions,
      It is said that one of the elderly and respected men of the Zemstvo,
      during the discussion at the congress on the question of how to combat the
      law setting limits to taxation by the Zemstvos, exclaimed: “Zemstvo
      members must, at last, say their word; for if they don’t, they’ll never be
      able to!” We are in complete agreement with the outcry of this liberal who
      is prepared to challenge the bureaucratic autocracy to open struggle. The
      Zemstvos are on the eve of internal bankruptcy. If the best Zemstvo men do
      not to day take energetic measures, if they do not get rid of their usual

      Manilov[2]attitude, their trivial questions of secondary
      importance—“tinkering”, as one venerable Zemstvo man put
      it—the Zemstvos will lose their adherents and turn into the usual
      “government offices”. Such an inglorious death is inevitable;
      for one cannot with impunity for whole decades do nothing but show
      cowardice, offer thanks, and humbly petition; one must threaten, demand,
      stop wasting time on trifles, and settle down to the real work.

[1]Sipyagin, D. S.—reactionary statesman in tsarist Russia;
      Minister of the Interior from 1899 to 1902.

Shakhovskoi,D. I.—prince, Zemstvo leading figure.

[2]Manilov—a character from Gogol’sDead Soulswhose name
      has become a synonym for complacency, sentimentality; and futile
      day-dreaming.